Pride goes before getting fucked over.

16Oct

It is an odd thing to watch someone losing their fucking mind in public.

And before we go any further, I realize there is a percentage of those reading this that have their panties in full twist mode just because I may or may not have prematurely F-bombed in the first sentence.

And I tried not to, I really did.

I rewrote the opening line several times.

And it just doesn’t work without the “fuck” in there.

So here is where we are at, physically and sarcastically.

Panera Bread in Redondo Beach.

The outside patio.

I started off inside, glorying in the delicious air conditioning because its hot out. (Its the middle of October, for fucks sake!)

And then I saw him.

The salesman.

And when I say, “Losing his fucking mind in public.” maybe I am sugar coating it a little bit.

He’s a suit, expensive one, the shoes have a power shine on them and his tie defines “Success”.

Except that the suit is slightly off

The tie has been loosened.

The first two buttons on the shirt are undone.

This opens the shirt more than the loosened tie will let it and makes the whole look even more off.

His face is twisted up into a painful grimace. (Not even that somewhat creepy Grimace from the McDonalds commercials, circa 1970.)

He is pissed.

I will call him Suit, because it really is a nice cut. He has taste.

But I gotta see this up close.

I have my headphones on, its important that he think I can’t hear him, and I carry my open laptop outside and park at a nearby table, completely engrossed in what is happening on my screen.

There is nothing on my screen, but he doesn’t need to know this.

“Lanny! You are a fucking rapist!”

This is the first thing I hear him say and as far as opening lines go, it is hands down one of the best I have ever heard.

A quick internet search for the proper manners or etiquette for publicly shitting yourself yields nothing concrete, so I am going to have to wing it and just keep listening.

Here is what I learned over the next 5 minutes:

Lanny, a business partner, has just screwed Suit over to the tune of $10’s of thousands. (The salesmen that are reading this are nodding their heads, its the nature of sales.)

Suit is somehow convinced that Lanny will give up those untold thousands if Suit berates him long enough.

Suit keeps referencing “Dan and Lori” and that they will not sit still for this. (They may be the bosses of this little evil empire. Jury is still out.)

In the end, Suit wound down and it finally seemed to settle in that he was fucked.

What really struck me was how long it took him to accept the fact that he was fucked.

Lanny was never going to give the money/sale back. I never even met the man and I figured it out well before Suit did.

Dan and Lori, being the bosses, don’t give two shits. They care that the sale was made. Thats it. I have worked for more Dan and Lori’s than I like to remember.

But, like the business version of a goldfish, Suit will forget his pain 30 seconds later when he closes another deal.

Sales is like that. It has no mercy and recognizes no friends other than money, and the relationship could hardly be called friendly.

I wish Suit well, and hope he closes something wonderful soon.

While I don’t particularly care for him, I do admire his taste in clothes.

Lanny, rot in hell you retched bastard, I have also worked with a lot of Lanny’s before.